


Our War Games

by Zelos



Category: Animorphs - Katherine A. Applegate
Genre: Brotherly Love, Brothers, Family, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-25
Updated: 2014-12-25
Packaged: 2018-03-03 11:35:57
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,946
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2849489
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Zelos/pseuds/Zelos
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p></p><blockquote>
  <p>They were totally <i>missing the point.</i> The answer to someone picking on his brother—<i>his brother</i>—over <i>basketball</i> was <i>not</i> to politely ask about the kids at school, it was for Jake to get so good at the game that he’d <i>use the kid’s head as the ball.</i><br/></p>
</blockquote><br/>My contribution to the Animorphs Secret Santa 2014.
            </blockquote>





	Our War Games

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Derin](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Derin/gifts).



> This is for Derin’s prompt for Animorphs Secret Santa 2014: “Jake and Tom interacting.” It takes place a few years before the series; Tom is in junior high/middle school and Jake is in elementary.
> 
> Betaed by the wonderful JustAnotherGhostwriter, who corrected all my mistakes, made plot suggestions, and yelled at me for the irony. Thanks, Ghostie!
> 
> Happy holidays everybody.

“Not playing basketball today with Adam, Jake?”

Jake shook his head. His answering words were muffled through his mouthful of roast beef: “Don’t like basketball.”

“What?” Tom paused in the middle of inhaling his dinner to eye his brother skeptically. “Not the tune you were singing last week, Midget.”

Jake flushed and their father gave Tom a look; Tom winced slightly, sheepish. “I, uh, I mean, why the change of heart?”

Jake looked even guiltier, if that was possible; he picked at his plate. “I’mnotverygood.” The mumbled words made it obvious that _Jake_ hadn’t been the one to bring it up.

Their parents got identical looks of concern on their faces.

“Jake, are your friends—”

“Do you need one of us to—”

“Oh, _screw that_ ,” Tom cut in, heedless of the sharp glare his parents shot at him. They were totally _missing the point_. The answer to someone picking on his brother— _his brother_ —over _basketball_ was _not_ to politely ask about the kids at school, it was for Jake to get so good at the game that he’d _use the kid’s head as the ball_.

It would be different if Jake didn’t like the sport, but he clearly did. And frankly, a showdown on the court said more than pretty words ever could.

“Don’t let anyone take ball away from you, Jake. Not anyone.” Tom swallowed the offending broccoli blocking his righteous indignation. “All you need is a little practice. You, me, driveway in thirty minutes. An hour every day and I guarantee you’ll dribble circles around everyone in your class and then some.”

“You have an extra hour every day?” his father asked in bewilderment.

“Tom, does Jake actually _want_ to—” his mother began.

But Jake had lit up like his birthday had came early and was now viciously attacking his plate of food with great abandon.

Tom shot his parents a triumphant look. Broccoli had never disappeared so fast.

 

Thirty-odd minutes later, Tom met Jake on the driveway. Jake’d been picking at his shoelaces but jumped up as soon as Tom approached. “I thought you changed your mind.”

“Nope.” Tom tossed Jake the basketball he was carrying. “Took me a bit find the pump was all.”

“Wait, it’s new?” Jake turned the striped ball over and over as if he could spot a secret. “You could’ve just given me one of your old ones.”

“Nah, all new for you.” Jake needed to get a feel for his _own_ ball. Besides, he’d be spending quite a bit of time with this, so Tom had grabbed one of his spares rather than have Jake hunt down Tom’s every time. Jake could probably use the encouragement anyway. “You’re stalling, Midget. C’mon, show me what you’ve got.”

Jake shot him a look that was one part nervous and three parts reproachful and began dribbling towards the net.

Within two minutes, Tom could…understand, if not appreciate…why Jake’s friends were less than complimentary about Jake’s basketball skills. His handling was terrible, he kept looking at the ball while he dribbled, and he seemed to have zero spatial awareness of the—admittedly not drawn on their driveway—boundaries of the court. “Okay, okay, stop.”

Jake caught the look on his face and promptly dropped the ball, flushing a dark red. “It’s okay, Tom, you don’t have to—”

“Put a sock in it, Midget.” Tom grabbed Jake by the arm and dragged him back; Jake, too startled by his language, didn’t resist. “You ain’t going anywhere.” Tom hooked the basketball into the air with his foot and caught it with his other hand. “First lesson: handling the ball. You hold and handle the ball with your finger _tips_ , not the palms. Your palms should never touch the ball except for drills. Hands splayed so you get enough grip—you should be able to hold the ball in one hand with your palm facing down. Like this.” He demonstrated, then switched hands, then turned his hand again to offer the ball to Jake.

Jake obediently held the ball as directed, but quickly caught the ball with his other hand as it slipped. “Ugh…”

“No biggie,” Tom shrugged. “Your hands are smaller. But here, pay attention. We’ll start with grabs and slaps…”

Twenty-five minutes later, Jake’s hands were bright red. So were Tom’s from all the demonstrating.

“We sure are using my palms a lot,” Jake grumbled, inspecting his hands.

“It’s for practice, Jake. Get a feel for the ball. You won’t play the game like that.” Tom blew on his own reddened palms. “We’ll do circles next, and just so you know,  you’ll be doing circles for the rest of the week…”

Another forty minutes later (which involved more chasing after the dropped ball than making circles with it), Tom finally called the practice session to a stop. Jake promptly flopped down in the middle of the driveway, draining his waterbottle.

Tom sat down beside him and cocked an eyebrow. “Bored yet?”

Jake’s brows furrowed. “A little,” he admitted. “I thought you’d be teaching me how to shoot.”

“Not if you keep dropping the ball mid-shot. Hey, don’t look like that—I’m not ragging on you. Everyone does handling drills before they do the exciting stuff. And everyone starts out playing like shit.” Well, Tom didn’t, but Jake didn’t have to know that. Tom nudged the ball towards Jake with his foot. “Just keep practicing. Thirty seconds per drill, then reverse directions. Do it every day, do it while you’re watching TV, hell, do it at dinner if you think you can get away with it. Just constantly practice getting the feel of the ball down.” He smirked. “And you better practice. I expect great improvements by the end of the week.”

Jake chewed his lip. “Mom doesn’t like us playing indoors, you know that. She says we might break something.” But he was fighting a smile, which was an improvement over the abject misery at the dinner table and the frustration during the last hour.

Tom grinned. “Blame it on Homer.”

“Tom!”

 

Thump, thump, thump.

“Jake! Pass it!”

It was a terrible pass—Jake’s ball-handling was improving, but he still forgot to account for _movement_. The ball sailed past Tom to where he had been, not where he was heading to. “Oops!”

“Follow where I’m _going_ , Jake,” Tom yelled back as he chased after the ball. “Here, catch— _shit!_ ”

Tom’s returning pass was perfectly-aimed and too fast; instead of trying to catch it, Jake ducked. The ball sailed through the air where his head had been and bounced to the other side of the court: thump, thump, thump.

Jake looked up at Tom from the floor of the basketball court. Tom sighed and jogged after the ball again. He walked back this time, ball tucked under his arm instead of dribbled.

“You’re never going to catch the ball if you run away from it, you know.” It came out harsher than he intended; Tom _had_ known that he’d returned the pass too hard.

Hurt flickered across his brother’s face, replaced by mulishness. “It was going to hit me!”

“No it wasn’t.” At Jake’s glare Tom amended, “okay, even if it was, it would’ve been just a light bop.”

“Light,” Jake repeated skeptically. Marco was rubbing off on him. “Light.”

“Look,” Tom said, feeling a little frustrated, “you can’t be afraid of the ball. You just can’t. You can’t be afraid of a bruise or two in sports.”

“I don’t wanna get hit,” Jake countered, looking as frustrated as he felt.

“You can’t—” Tom fumbled for something appropriate and grown-up sounding to convince his brother, finally settling on something their father said a lot. “It’s about reason…reasonable risk. You can’t fight for the ball, get the ball, if you’re afraid of it, if you won’t risk getting hit a time or two. You get better by being afraid, and _doing it anyway_.”

“Hey, Tom, who’s this?”

The brothers looked up to see Tom’s basketball coach crossing the gym floor with a bag of basketballs. The man looked vaguely puzzled.

Argument forgotten, Tom turned back to his coach. There was a reason why he’d brought Jake here today. “Hey, Coach, this is my brother, Jake. Can he watch us for a bit?” Tom phrased it as a request, but he wasn’t really _asking_.

Coach Harding eyed Jake and shrugged. “So long as he doesn’t get hit by the ball, I suppose.”

“Then he’d catch it,” Tom returned brightly—and perhaps a bit pointedly. “C’mon, Midget.”

Jake glared at him, hissing under his breath as they walked, “Tom, _don’t call me that_ in front of others.”

“Uh-huh. C’mon, over here by the cones…”

 

Jake trudged up to him after practice, his basketball tucked under his arm. He peered worriedly at Tom. “You okay? Does it hurt?”

Tom looked down at the ice pack he was holding to his ankle and shrugged, trying to hold back the wince. “Just a light sprain.” He’d landed badly after a jump block. “I’ll walk it off.”

“Want me to call Mom?”

“No way, she’d worry too much. I’m _fine_.” To prove his point, Tom pulled the ice pack away and straightened, slinging his bag over his shoulder. “C’mon.”

“Tom,” Josh called from the other side of the gym where he’d been stacking up cones, “no big, right? We still have our centre? Big game next week!”

“I’ll still kick you lunkheads’ butts even if I play with one leg,” Tom shot back, which earned a laugh and a mocking salute from his friend.

Jake looked alarmed. “Tom, you’re not _really_ going to—”

“Damn it, I was _kidding_ —don’t go telling Mom, all right?” Tom rolled his eyes. “I’m fiiiiiiiiiiine.” He was just walking a little slower than usual, that was all. “Now come _on_ already. I dumped cleanup duties on the others today, and if we don’t get going we’ll miss the bus.”

Jake relaxed, though he still gave Tom’s ankle worried looks as they walked (slowly) down the emptied hallways. “But you will go easy, right, if you really hurt yourself?”

Damn it, Jake worried as much as their parents. Tom didn’t need this from his _brother_ , too. “Look, I promise if I actually hurt myself—and a twisted ankle doesn’t _count_ , it’ll be fine by tomorrow, geez—I will take it easy. I will take a break. Cross my heart and all that.” A pause, then Tom added, “only until it heals of course.”

Jake made a face. “I’m not sure I’d…go back to anything if I actually got hurt from it. Or caused anyone else to be hurt. You…really aren’t afraid.” The last part was softer.

“Of course not.” Tom couldn’t keep the note of pride from his voice as he continued, “I’m the captain.”

“So?”

Tom blinked. Well, Jake wouldn’t know. He didn’t watch much professional sports. “’Cause. Like, the coach? He calls the shots, trains us, blah blah…off the court. During practice or intermission. But on the court, between whistles? The guys are looking at me.”

Well, okay, at their level captaincy only allowed them to represent the team when the ref does the meetings prior to game-start. Junior high kids didn’t really call the shots or plays otherwise, unlike the pros. But it was the _principle_ of the matter. And Tom _was_ better than the rest of his teammates, he was just too young for it to matter. His point remained, anyway.

“Can’t wimp out if I’m the lead,” Tom said loftily. “You don’t see captains of NBA teams lose it, right?”

“Hey, Tom!”

The brothers turned to see Josh, Greg, and a few other guys jogging up to them.

“Hey,” Greg spared a glance towards Tom’s ankle, then shrugged—probably deciding that if Tom was walking on it, it was no big deal. “So, we’re going out for ice cream. Ya wanna come? Your brother can come too,” he added generously.

Tom actually considered it for a brief moment…but then he spotted Jake’s basketball still under Jake’s arm and sighed, shaking his head. “Nah, got stuff to do at home. Raincheque?”

Jake instantly looked guilty. “Tom, I could—”

“ _Stuff to do at home_ ,” Tom said firmly over Jake’s words. He was already tugging Jake towards the bus stop again. “You know how Dad freaks out if I don’t organize that garage. C’mon, Jake.”

 

“Tom?” His mother’s voice drifted out from the kitchen. “Can you come help me for a moment?”

Tom froze in the middle of the hallway and scowled. “ _Mom_ , I’m heading to practice! I’ll miss the bus!”

“I’ll drive you afterwards. Can you come here, please?” and that brooked no argument.

With an irritated sigh, Tom dropped his ball and bag unceremoniously onto the carpet and turned back for the kitchen. “ _What?_   What’s the big…” he trailed off as he looked at the spic-and-span kitchen and the happily-simmering pots of food on the stove. Even the dishes were washed.

His mother was looking at him expectantly, clearly not needing any help at all. “Where’s Jake?”

“Um,” Tom blinked. “Pr…practicing ball with Adam and Bill, I think? He’s not home.”

“Good.” His mother fixed him with a long, careful look. “I wanted to talk to you. Your father and I…well, we think you’re pushing Jake too hard.”

“What’s _that_ supposed to mean?” Tom retorted, instantly defensive.

“Jake is living, breathing, and sleeping basketball now. And breaking things left and right. He’s a terrible liar, you know.” His mother crossed her arms. “I haven’t said anything to him yet. I wanted to make sure all this isn’t coming from you first.”

“Well, this is what he wants.” Tom was scowling outright now; he crossed his arms right back. “So what’s the problem?”

“The problem is that I—we—are wondering if Jake wants this for _himself_ , or for _you?_ Jake looks up to you, Tom—idolizes you. He thinks you hung the moon and stars.” His mother bent down to stare at Tom at eye level, making Tom squirm. “You’re great at basketball, Tom—you’ll probably get a sports scholarship for college, maybe even go pro if you want to take it that far. But Jake’s not you. He doesn’t have that kind of talent. And he doesn’t _have_ to go as far as you in ball, and it’s unfair to expect that of him.”

“He _wants_ to do this,” Tom argued. “I’m his brother, I’m _supposed_ to help him!”

“Help him gain confidence? Yes. Push him so that he’s more afraid of disappointing you than disappointing his friends? That’s going too far.”

That stopped Tom cold. “I…I didn’t…”

“Are you sure?”

Tom didn’t answer. His mind flicked back to the hours of practice sessions; Jake looking up at him, smile tinged with exhaustion; Jake walking alongside him after Tom’s practices, with those silent, sidelong looks.

Was she right? Was he putting too much pressure on Jake?

His mother sighed. “You’re team captain, Tom, and part of being the lead is to know your team. To know when to push and when not to. Make sure to only push only to the point where it’s not hurting them. That goes for your teammates too, not just your brother.” She rose, reaching for her purse hanging on a nearby chair. “Go put your shoes on. I’ll drive you to practice.”

The drive was a silent one.

 

Tom cut their next practice session short. “Hey, Jake. This…you okay with doing this?”

Jake frowned up at him, clearly disconcerted by the comparatively short practice. “What are you talking about?”

“The practice. All this training. You…well, you actually want to play, right?” Tom tucked the basketball under one arm, suddenly anxious. “You’re not doing this for me?”

Jake looked confused. “Yeah. I mean, yeah, I want to play, I want to get better.” His brow furrowed. “Why do you ask?”

“No reason,” Tom answered casually. “Just…wanna make sure this is what you want, not just…to show up other people. Or for other people.” He faltered for a moment, looking down at the ball under his arm, then blurted, “look, part of my job is morale, so I need to know when to push and when to step off. And…maybe I’m not so good at that second part. If you need me to back off, you let me know.”

Jake’s brow relaxed, though he still looked faintly confused. “Yeah, I…I want to do this.” He seemed happy enough to take the break, however, and walked over to flop down on the lawn.

After a moment, Tom went over to sit down beside him, idly spinning the basketball so that the tiger stripes blended into an orange-and-black blur. “Okay, Midget. Just…checking.”

The pair was silent for a long moment. Jake watched Tom’s spinning ball out of the corner of his eye, then burst out suddenly, “I’ll make it to the nationals one day.” His voice was one part fierce to two parts hopeful, like he was trying to convince himself.

Tom nodded. “Yup. You’ll lead your own team…we may play against each other somewhere down the line.” He grinned, trying to pull back levity for a too-serious moment. “Just make sure not to use everything I taught you against me, yeah?”

Jake blinked. “Can’t we, I dunno, play on the same team?”

“And share the glory? Nah.” Tom rolled his eyes and gave him a shove. “You’re too serious, Midget; I was kidding. Of course you won’t hold back.” His smile softened around the corner, a small quirk of lip. “After all, you want to win too, don’t you?”


End file.
